AllFreeNovel
Share Us
At last, they reached the laundry.
“Let me get that.” Mrs. Whittaker took out a handkerchief and wiped away the crumbs and smears of jam that Rose’s hasty eating had left behind.
“Thank you,” Rose said shyly, feeling as though she were six years old, sitting beside her mother in their parlor again.
Mrs. Whittaker patted her gently on the arm. “Can’t have you looking a state, now, can we?”
After adjusting the collar of Rose’s dress and straightening the straps of her pinny, Mrs. Whittaker urged her into the laundry where a cluster of red-cheeked faces turned to observe the newcomer. There were six of them: four of them young like Rose, while the other two were similar in age to Mrs. Whittaker, their gray hair standing out against the reds, blondes, and browns of the younger girls.
“Morning, ladies.” Mrs. Whittaker ushered Rose in front of her. “I’d like yer to meet Miss Rose Parker. She’s to be working here from today, so I trust yer’ll be kind and show her what’s what. She were a seamstress in London, so perhaps it’d be best if yer put her on darning duty while yer show her the rest of what’s expected.”
Rose gave a nervous wave. “Hello.”
A chorus of welcome rippled back in jolly feminine voices.
“These young’uns are Louisa, Georgie, Neve, and Hannah.” Mrs. Whittaker pointed them out in order: a fair-haired, plump-figured girl; a raven-haired beauty with impossibly pale skin; a redhead with more freckles than Rose had ever seen in her life, and a mousy-haired girl with the broadest smile and shockingly blue eyes. “And these mother hens are Mrs. Linehan and Mrs. Bell.”
“A welcome to ye,” said one of the older women, her hands scrubbing a shirt absently across a ridged washboard. She had darker gray hair, while her counterpart, Mrs. Bell, had hair that was almost white.
Mrs. Whittaker gently nudged Rose in the back. “Well, I’ll leave yer be. Any trouble, yer let me know.”
And, just like that, Rose’s new life began in the fuggy condensation of the laundry. The quartet of younger women immediately rushed forward to greet her, tugging her earnestly toward a workbench at the back of the cavernous outbuilding, where a monumental pile of clothing in need of attention sat waiting. Beside it, there was a box containing needles of every thickness and threads in black, white, and gray to go with them.
“Thank goodness you’ve come when you have. We all hate darning, but we have to do it because Linehan and Bell have arthritic fingers,” the mousy-haired girl, Hannah, whispered out of earshot of the older women.
Regardless, Mrs. Linehan lifted her head with a smirk. “I can hear yez as if ye were next te me! Me hands ain’t arthritic. I just don’t care te do the darnin’ either.” She had a lilting Irish accent and a wickedly mischievous smile that instantly charmed Rose. “And don’t ye be droppin’ the ‘Mrs.’, else I’ll have Mrs. Whittaker box yer ears.” She cackled, and Rose realized she was only joking.
Rose rifled through the box of darning accouterments, recognizing all as if she were looking upon old friends. “Do I just work through this pile until it’s done?”
“Or until the next pile comes in,” the redhead, Neve, said with a smile. “And itwillcome in.”
As Rose took her seat, fully intending to begin her work without further interruption, so she would not be deemed lazy, the four girls huddled closer. Hannah perched right up on the workbench, marking her out as the more wayward one of the bunch.
“Is it true that His Lordship brought you all the way from London?” Louisa, the fair-haired, comely girl, asked shyly.
Rose threaded a spool of white into one of the thinnest needles as she prepared an answer. Perfect for the shirts that were stacked at the top of the pile. “Yes, he did. In his defense, I probably looked like I might get eaten alive by wild dogs on the street if he didn’t do something.” She smiled at the girls, and they chuckled with delight.
“She’s funny, Mrs. Linehan! You’ll like her!” Hannah grinned.
“As long as she’s the right kind o’ funny, unlike ye,” Mrs. Linehan shot back, never once stopping in her washing.
The raven-haired girl, Georgie, propped her chin on her hands. “I heard he rescued you from vagabonds who attacked you in an alley. Was he wonderfully heroic?” Her eyes shone with admiration. “I bet he was. It’s a shame he couldn’t have been on his horse. He looks majestic on his horse.”
Rose laughed. “I don’t think the horse would have fit in the alleyway. But it’s true that he saved me from two wretched thieves, and he was, indeed, wonderfully heroic. I have never seen anything like it, least of all from a gentleman such as him.”
The way he moved…Her mind wandered for a moment, remembering how his athletic body had twisted and twirled as though he were a dancer while wielding a blade with deadly skill. Beauty and bloodshed. A warrior who truly deserved the title.
She licked her dry lips as she thought of the hollow at the base of his throat, which she had observed when he slept for a few minutes in the carriage. He had loosened his cravat and undone a few buttons closest to his collar, revealing a sliver of tanned skin, slick with the temperature of the carriage’s interior. Heat undulated down from the base of her own throat, as she recalled, and pooled in her abdomen, where it spread through her like warmed honey.
“Mrs. Whittaker said he was like his old self when she saw him this morning,” the white-haired older woman, Mrs. Bell, chimed into the conversation. A sad smile graced her thin, cracked lips.
Mrs. Linehan gazed wistfully into the suds of the washing tub. “He were such a sweet lad when he were a wain.” She scrubbed at a particularly stubborn stain. “That sweetness is still in ‘im, but war changes a man. Changes all o’ them, no matter where they come from or how much wealth and land they have.”
“She lost a son to the war,” Neve whispered, for context. “He isn’t dead, but he’s in a sanatorium. He’ll probably be there for the rest of his life.”
If Mrs. Linehan heard that, she did not show it. Instead, she continued to speak of Lord Langston as a child. “I remember, he were such a sensitive and kind wain. Used te sneak Mrs. Bell and I jellied fruits and all sorts, just ‘cause he wanted te.” Mrs. Bell nodded in confirmation. “He’d sing carols at Christmastide in the village, and he’d give flowers te all the ladies in the staff on the first day o’ spring. Every year, without fail, ‘til he turned ten-and-eight.”
Mrs. Bell sighed. “After that, he was never the same.”
